Miss Bunting

by Angela Thirkell

  ‘Now then, Charlie,’ said his wife, ‘don’t be horrid,’ and there was some good-natured, heavy banter between them about Molly being jealous of pretty girls, which had the effect of making Lady Fielding feel glad that they didn’t always live in Hallbury and then be ashamed of herself for the feeling.

  ‘And to think of Cicely Holly being in the New Town,’ said Mrs Watson. ‘I’ll phone her up and get her to come to tea one day and bring the girl with her. What’s her name? She’ll be nice company for Anne, make a change.’

  Anne volunteered that it was Heather.

  Poor Lady Fielding, who had always quite liked Mrs Watson, though so seldom at Hallbury that there was no intimacy, felt her mild liking turn to gall. A woman who could say ‘phone up’ would be capable of anything and was indeed deliberately encouraging Anne to thwart her father’s and mother’s wishes. Then she blamed herself for being unfair. Anne was a darling, good, confiding girl and could not suspect the depths of social currents. In fact, Anne was being nice and polite to Mrs Watson and she, Dora Fielding, was divagating far from her own standards of behaviour.

  ‘What a good thing Mrs Merivale’s rooms were empty,’ said Mrs Watson. ‘She’s a good little soul and had quite a fight for it after her husband died, I believe. But her people were very good churchgoers, and what I say is, the background always tells.’

  ‘They nearly weren’t empty,’ said Jane. ‘At least, she had a lodger who went to see about them.’

  ‘Not that dreadful Captain Hooper, the Hush-Hush man,’ said Mrs Watson. ‘Nearly everyone in the county has had him and got rid of him. He started with the Villarses at Northbridge Rectory and tried to get into Beliers Priory but General Waring wouldn’t have him. Intelligence does throw up the most peculiar objects. What I say is, it’s a wonder we’re winning the war at all when you see the kind of lodgers people get.’

  ‘I don’t know who it was,’ said Jane, ‘but she said it was nice to have him.’

  Dr Dale, who owing to a life’s work on Haggai and his age, which was just going to be considered by the Oxbridge Press when war broke out, thus giving them an opportunity to shelve various scholarly works which would obviously never sell, was apt to have his mind elsewhere, suddenly came back to A.D. and asked what was wrong with Intelligence. He understood, he said, from the Archbishop’s last speech in the Lords that Our Leaders were proving their quality in the furnace of war.

  There was a moment’s silence.

  ‘Isn’t the Rector an old darling,’ said Mrs Watson, beaming upon the company. ‘But what I always say is that all those books do make a frightful difference and give people a wonderful outlook.’

  This remark, though profoundly true in its essence, again turned everyone to marble.

  ‘I expect,’ said Anne, and then stopped, suddenly overcome with embarrassment at finding herself addressing so large a company on so large a theme.

  ‘Well, Miss Anne,’ said Mr Watson, who affected this mode of address for young unmarried ladies, which his wife said was a scream, ‘what do you expect?’

  ‘Oh, I only thought,’ said Anne, ‘that Mr Churchill would know if the Intelligence was really funny. I don’t mean funny exactly, but what Mrs Watson said. I expect it is really to deceive German spies, like that play, mummy, where the silly young man is really the clever detective.’

  She stopped, crimson with nervousness and feeling that she had made a fool of herself and her family. But her audience, who were all fond of her, thought none the worse of her and Robin smiled in a way that Anne found strengthening.

  ‘Well, what I say is,’ said Mrs Watson, summing up the situation in a masterly way, ‘that if Mr Churchill put Captain Hooper into Hush-Hush to put the Germans off the scent, he never did a better day’s work. And now,’ she continued, having disposed of Captain Hooper, ‘let’s have a good talk about Haggai, Dr Dale. Did you see he was in the Times the other day?’

  ‘Haggai? I did not notice it,’ said Dr Dale. ‘I usually read my Times very carefully. I cannot understand this. We have got our old Timeses, Robin, I hope.’

  Robin said that he put them on the study shelf himself and only let them go for kitchen use or salvage after four weeks.

  ‘If it was by the Bishop, I can understand it’s not attracting my attention,’ said Dr Dale, who in common with the whole body of Barsetshire clergy regarded his Bishop as specially sent to try him and to encourage the Disestablishment of the Church. ‘But if it was Crawley, I should have spotted his style at once.’ For Dr Crawley, the present Dean of Barchester, was an excellent clergyman of the Moderate school, and something of an authority on the prophetic writings. ‘The only matter in which I may be to blame,’ he continued, while everyone listened respectfully or made a respectful appearance of listening, ‘is that little article which appears at regular intervals, I believe, near the Court Circular, I do not know what there is about it, but I cannot bring myself to read it. If the article on Haggai was there, it is a lesson to me to prove all things.’

  ‘By the time one has done the Court Circular and the marriages and the funerals and the engagements,’ said Lady Fielding, sympathetically, ‘which is really the only way one has of keeping in touch with old friends now, one simply doesn’t feel equal to any more on that page.’

  ‘Don’t worry, father,’ said Robin, ‘I’ll look through the Timeses to-night. The article wasn’t very long ago, you say,’ he added, addressing Mrs Watson.

  ‘I never said an article, my dear boy,’ said Mrs Watson laughing heartily, ‘It was the crossword,’ at which the rest of the party couldn’t help laughing too.

  ‘Crossword? I never do them, I don’t understand them,’ said Dr Dale. ‘When Buckle was editor there weren’t any crosswords.’

  ‘You ought to,’ said Mrs Watson. ‘They are quite educational. I learn ever so many words I didn’t know.’

  If Dr Dale, the most courteous of pastors, could have brought himself to cast a venomous and contemptuous look at a respected female parishioner, this would have been the moment.

  ‘Now, what was the clue?’ said Mrs Watson.

  ‘As far as my memory serves me,’ said Sir Robert, also a confirmed addict, ‘it ran something like this: “The old woman was lively in French.”’

  ‘Old woman?’ asked Dr Dale, indignantly. ‘Haggai was not an old woman. The term might, though I would deprecate such a use, be applied to one or two of the minor prophets; but most emphatically not to Haggai.’

  ‘It’s only a kind of play on words, Dr Dale,’ said Lady Fielding. ‘The Hag part of Haggai sounds like an old woman; like a hag.’

  ‘A fool, Lady Fielding,’ said the Rector with Johnsonian echo, ‘would not consider such an etymology. The most ignorant tyro would tell you that.’

  Lady Fielding meekly said that she did not mean that exactly.

  The Rector then fell into paroxysms of apology for having treated Lady Fielding as he would have treated a fellow scholar; as he would have treated the Master of Lazarus, whose little book, The Economic Outlook of Israel under Zerubbabel, he had had the pleasure of reviewing with the contempt it deserved in the Church Times. He then felt that he had not improved his case and looked unhappy.

  ‘I do quite understand, Dr Dale,’ said Lady Fielding earnestly; and seeing that he still looked distressed she added: ‘And if you would lend me the review, I am sure I would understand even better.’

  Dr Dale, much gratified by such a request, and anxious to make amends for any unintentional discourtesy to a guest whom he liked, rose, went to a bookcase, took down a small pamphlet and looked at it lovingly.

  ‘This is an off-print of my review,’ he said, half to himself, half to the company at large. ‘I had fifty made at my own expense and still have a few left. If I may have your permission to write your name in it, Lady Fielding, I shall feel you have forgiven my want of courtesy.’

  Sir Robert, rather maliciously, said that to appreciate fully Dr Dale’s review, his wife ought also to read the
Master of Lazarus’s book, but luckily the Rector did not hear this remark, being fully occupied writing Lady Fielding’s name in his beautiful and still firm writing on the flyleaf of the pamphlet.

  ‘Well,’ said Mrs Watson, ‘what I always say is the Bible’s a wonderful book. You never know what you will find in it.’

  Luckily this piece of Biblical criticism did not reach the Rector’s ears either, for he might have been seriously distressed by it, and then Lady Fielding began to say goodbye. Jane said she must collect Frank, who was somewhere in the garden with Master Watson. Robin said he would come with her and the rest of the party went to their homes.

  There was no particular hurry. Double Summer Time was dragging its slow length along in a land where it was always chill, grey, unfriendly afternoon. As they sauntered down the gravel walk against the old brick wall where apricots, that almost lost fruit, still grew and ripened, Robin said one of the worst things the war had done was to make that awful after-lunch feeling go on till supper-time, or even later, and if he were the Peace Conference, he’d make Germany have triple summer time for ever and ever. Jane said the Japs too.

  ‘Quite right,’ said Robin. ‘And if there were a quadruple summer time they’d deserve it. I say, Jane,’ he added in a kind of desperation, ‘I never know if I ought to mention the Japs or not, because it’s so rotten for you about Francis. So if you don’t think me a beast I want to do the right thing. I mean, does it make it worse if people talk about them? Don’t think I’m trying to be sympathetic or anything, but we do all feel most awfully sorry about Francis.’

  Jane walked even more slowly and finally stopped.

  ‘I don’t suppose I mind anything very much,’ she said, examining a beetle-eaten rose-leaf with great attention. ‘I expect I mind just about as much as you mind about your foot. I mean one knows the horribleness is there, but quite often one forgets it. I suppose you do.’

  ‘Oh, Lord! yes,’ said Robin, vaguely feeling that the higher he set his own standard of courage the more valiantly Jane would reach towards it. ‘Sometimes I forget for ages, especially in school hours. And the boys do so enjoy my sham foot. One does wake up at three in the morning sometimes, of course.’

  ‘Quite,’ said Jane. ‘But there’s one thing, Robin; you can’t get your foot back. I might get Francis.’

  She paused and there was a silence again while Robin considered his statement.

  ‘What a beast I am,’ he said suddenly. ‘I never thought. If there were a chance that I could grow a new foot, or at least have the old one back again, I’d be twice as sick as I am. Knowing’s better than not knowing.’

  ‘Or you might think,’ said Jane in a sombre voice, gently ripping the beetle-gnawed leaf to pieces, ‘that it would be better to know that your foot was all blown to bits than to imagine that it was wanting to get back to you and couldn’t, and that you mightn’t know what to do with it if it did come.’

  The silence grew. If Jane did feel that to put one’s head on someone’s shoulder, almost anyone’s shoulder, would be an anodyne: if Robin felt that one might cheer a person up by putting an arm round their shoulders and giving them an encouraging and impersonal hug; whatever their feelings might have been, neither really liked being demonstrative, so they walked on again in the direction of a noise which had gradually been forcing itself upon their attention.

  ‘I don’t think a tank could get into the stable yard,’ said Robin, ‘but if one has, your child is at the bottom of it.’

  ‘Or Molly Watson’s,’ said Jane impartially, though she knew and Robin knew that Frank was the ringleader in all his and Master Watson’s doings.

  As they entered the stable yard the noise resolved itself into the old garden watering-cart, for we do not know how otherwise to describe the kind of iron boiler on two wheels with a third dwarf wheel to steady it when not being pushed and a kind of perambulator handle to propel it. This interesting machine used to be pushed by the gardener’s boy in a happier age and from it the undergardener would fill his watering-can and water the flower-beds. For a good many years a hose had made it almost unnecessary, though the old gardener still used it for his more delicate plants, leaving it in the sun so that the chill was taken off the water. At the moment it was obviously some engine of destruction. Both little boys were pushing it across the cobbles with loud shrieks and bellows, and appeared by their red and perspiring faces to find it heavy work. On its side some letters or figures had been chalked by a youthful hand.

  ‘Hullo, mother; hullo, sir,’ shrieked Frank, his shrill voice overtopping the clank of the water-cart, ‘this is V13, the tram the Yanks filled with dynamite and sent it at the Germans. Look, mother! That’s the Germans! Come on, Tom!’

  With more loud encouraging yells the little boys pushed their clanking machine towards the slight depression in the stable yard where the water used in washing down carriages used to drain away. Here they had set up an old and battered wooden stump, black beyond recognition. With a final whoop they gave the machine a push down the slope. It crashed into the figure, both fell over, and a quantity of garden rubbish such as broken flower-pots, pieces of tile edging, rusty bits of wire and a large round stone ball, was shot in all directions.

  ‘Look, mother!’, ‘Look, Mrs Gresham,’ shouted the little boys in chorus.

  ‘Good lord!’ said Robin, ‘it’s our old Aunt Sally that we used to have at mothers’ meetings and school teas. Hi, Frank, where did you find her?’

  Frank said in the loose box where all the trunks were.

  ‘She must have been there for about twenty years,’ said Robin thoughtfully, ‘because I can just remember her with pipes in her nose and eyes and ears, and I don’t think father had any school teas after my mother died. Give her a lick of paint and she’d be as good as ever. But I don’t suppose those wretched children know what an Aunt Sally is, and I don’t suppose there’s a clay pipe in the world now.’

  The little boys, not quite understanding, but somehow scenting sadness in the air, stood watching the grown-ups.

  ‘I didn’t think you needed it, sir,’ said Frank. ‘We found it behind a box of croquet things. Oh, mother, we had a splendid game of being blacksmiths. Look, mother! Come on, Tom!’

  Before the horrified eyes of the grown-ups, Messrs. Gresham and Watson rushed to the ci-devant loose box, now a kind of repository for unwanted house and garden furniture, returned with a mallet apiece, and improvising a kind of forging song, swiped in turn at the stone mounting-block.

  ‘Frank! Frank! stop!’ cried his agonized mother, while his schoolmaster with a hearty oath strode over and wrenched the mallets from the amateur blacksmiths’ grasp. One was chipped, the head of the other was loose.

  ‘I am so sorry,’ said Jane.

  ‘It’s not your fault,’ said Robin. ‘It’s those young devils. The Women’s Institute have the loan of our old croquet set occasionally; otherwise it wouldn’t really matter.’

  ‘Sir,’ said Frank in dulcet tones, picking up the mallets which Robin had laid on the horse-block, ‘could we play at crutching then? Here you are, Tom.’

  Putting a mallet under one armpit, each little boy began to limp about the yard, the end of the mallet handles banging heavily on the cobbles.

  ‘No, you couldn’t,’ said Jane with sudden violence. ‘Give me those mallets at once; at once I said, and don’t ever touch them again. Oh, Robin, I could kill them with pleasure.’

  ‘Well, I wouldn’t if I were you. You couldn’t get two more the same in a hurry,’ said Robin reasonably as he took the mallets from her.

  The little boys, rather sobered by the sight of an angry mother, an unusual experience for either, began to tidy away their rubbish. Robin, with sudden suspicion, asked where the stone ball came from. Master Watson said it was on the top of the rockery and somehow it got rather loose.

  ‘It’s only one of the old stone balls off the pillars of the coach-house gate,’ said Robin, with the resignation of despair. ‘One was crack
ed and my father has rather a fondness for the one that wasn’t, so he got the gardener to make a kind of rockery with the ball on top. I’ll tell him to put it back to-morrow.’

  ‘Goodbye, Robin,’ said Jane. ‘I don’t suppose you’ll want to see us again for quite a long time. Come along, Tom. I’m going to take you home before you and Frank can do anything worse. I can’t tell you how sorry I am, Robin.’

  Robin accompanied them to the gate and saw them on their way down Little Gidding, telling Jane not to be silly and worry, because it didn’t matter a bit. Then he came back to finish the tidying. Just as he was lifting Aunt Sally to restore her to her home in the loose box, his father came into the yard and asked him what he was doing.

  ‘I may as well tell you it’s those boys of Jane’s and Molly Watson’s, father,’ said Robin, holding Aunt Sally upright while he spoke. ‘They were playing at Germans and got the stone ball off the rockery, but it’s all right, and old Chimes can put it back to-morrow. It’s funny to think that lots of children have never seen an Aunt Sally and never will. Lord, Lord, how much valuable knowledge is going to be lost by the time the war’s over.’